Thursday, August 23, 2012

In another long overdue update, I've made some progress on my playmat.
I had to return that library book, but not before I managed to find used copies of both The Knitted Farmyard and Knit an Enchanted Castle for really cheap. They include nearly all the things I wanted to make from the Knit a Fantasy Story book, even down to using the same photos an wording. The patterns are jumbled around a little, but they're there with the exception of just a few. I'm thinking they must be included in Jan Messent's Knitted Gnomes and Fairies book, but I'm not sure.

Anyhow, this is where I'm at right now-

I know they say that the camera doesn't lie, but I swear I've done more than the picture shows! Or maybe it just seems that way because that stream was so much more involved than I expected?

As you can see I've filled in more of the grassy area and made a few small bushes by leaving then yarn in those sections of latch hook longer. I also extended the dirt path towards the stream, which I finished.
The other major (to me) accomplishment was finishing the bridge. The bridge is 1x1 ribbing, and I've tried to make it 'pop' by threading pipe cleaners through the underside.

I was going to just do that on either side, but ended up adding one through the middle to keep it from pulling or sagging.

I'm happy with how it turned out. Perfect for letting a gnome fish from, I think.

My major design change since my last (and only other...sorry) update is to change the pond itself. The small round pond in the pattern wasn't working for me. I've decided to make it more of an oval, and to keep the shore slightly irregular. I will probably regret having made the outline bigger once I get to filling it in, but I do like the look of the shape much better.

I'm trying to stick with no new projects until September, but I really need to knit a couple Mochimochi pieces so I can figure out my scale better before I go much further. Is it cheating if I make a mailbox and gnome before then? It would be for an existing WIP after all...or maybe I'm just trying to justify my startitis?

Monday, August 20, 2012

I’m in the middle of a WIP whittle down right now, so most of my free time is going to that. I’m only knitting on my WIPs and not casting on anything new until the end of the month. After seeing how much I accomplished during the 17 days of the Ravellenic Games, I wanted to see what I could do with another 17 days. Hopefully by September I’ll have a nice post with a few FOs to show off.

In the meantime, I tried to link someone to something here and then realized there were things I had thought I posted, but apparently never did. So this is a quick update to fix that.

I now have a bunch of recent pictures of my nieces - ALWAYS newsworthy. I even have a couple knitting related ones from when they were at my Aunt’s house swimming. Here are the pictures of Rochelle and Sharee wearing the summer tops/beach cover-ups I made.

Sharee’s was pretty wet at that point, so it was sagging a little, but still great to see the girls wearing them!

Another ‘Action Shot’ of the knitting gift variety – Cody right after I gave him his sock monkey. He was so very happy.

That look on his face right there is why he is high on the knit-worthy list, special occasion or not.

Now it's back to knitting for me.
I've already gone from 9 WIPs to 8. Maybe I can get down to 6 or 7 by month's end?

Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Thinking I could post on any sort of schedule during the Ravellenic Games was crazy talk, total insanity.

Kind of like my goals, except they're the crazy I might be able to accomplish.

So far I have one sock done, in just four days. Well, I still have to sew the buttons on, but still that is great progress for me. The second sock just started the heel flap one row ago. I just realized I don't have a good picture of them uploaded and I'm running out of time before work. I'll be sure to get one before next post. The down side of all this non-stop knitting is that I no longer have time to share it all properly!

The Dalek hat is still in chart one, but making good progress. I plan to take it with me to knitting group tonight, and hopefully will get to the 2nd chart.

The tea cozy hasn't been started yet, but as long as I get it started by this weekend I'll be fine time wise.